chills and coffee
by queen ino
Summary: The wind howls and screams around them, but she doesn't really seem to notice; not with him around. —ShiSaku, college!AU.


okay so. there's this fanart by tumblr user leiandroid that has been stuck in my head for aaaaages, and i wrote a short little thing based off it, and here it is. if you'd like to see the art that inspired this, there's a link on my profile. c:

i don't own naruto!

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Sakura huddles down under her black pea coat, trying and failing to shield herself from the wind. Her hair, pink and pale, the same colour as the blooms on the cherry blossom trees that decorate the campus in spring, falls around her face, creating a sort-of shield that helps a bit. Then the wind picks up, harsh and cold and fierce, blowing pieces of her hair around and causing them to whip against her cheeks. The headband that she'd carefully slid into her freshly washed and brushed hair this morning helps to keep it from becoming an absolute mess, but her hair is definitely trying its damnedest.

The majority of the force of the wind disappears from behind her, though she can still feel just a bit of it blowing the outer pieces of her hair around. She tilts her head up and back to see what's blocking the wind, and a smiling face, with brown eyes and ridiculously pale blonde hair and a red nose, appears in her line of vision. His name is Shī, she remembers—they share three classes, and they're constantly vying for first in the class in each. Sometimes she pulls ahead, sometimes he does, and sometimes they're tied. Right now she's winning in two, she thinks.

Shī smiles down at her, showing his teeth, which make her think of tiny white pearls nestled inside colourful oysters. "You got caught in this, too, Sakura?" He waves a hand at the storm blowing around them, wind chasing snowflakes through the sky, up and down and all around, as they flutter from the dark clouds above their heads.

"Yes," she grumbles, voice muffled slightly by the green scarf wrapped three times and pulled tightly around her neck. She's not sure if he can even hear her, with the wind howling all around. "I wouldn't be out in this monstrosity at all, but my best friend had an emergency that I had to attend to last night. I took the bus there and spent the night, and now the buses are down today thanks to this. I would have just stayed at her apartment until this was over, but I have a paper that needs to be done this weekend, so I'm stuck walking, since I didn't bring a flash drive."

He laughs, and she's surprised by how much she likes the sound, how it sticks in her mind even after the noise ends. She can see his breath escaping, white clouds near his mouth that dissipate within seconds. "I'm in pretty much the same situation, funny enough. Karui—she's an old friend of mine; we've known each other since the eight day of kindergarten, when we got into a major fight over juice and animal crackers, were sent to sit in the corner together for twenty minutes, and managed to form a bond within that time—was panicking over an art assignment of hers due soon, so I went to her place to calm her down, tell her it looks fine, things such as that. And I've got to write my paper too—probably the same one as yours; the Biochemistry one? For Professor Senju?—so I'm walking back to the dorms."

"Yeah, that's the one I have to write, too. It would have been done two days ago, except that lab ran over on Thursday, and I had to finish the lab write-up instead of writing my paper, since we had to get back together on Friday."

They come to a crosswalk—or what _should_ be a crosswalk, with the white-gray stripes pattern of all the crosswalks around this town—and stop, waiting for the pedestrian light across the street to turn from bright red to an even brighter green. It doesn't take long (there are no cars out today, with the roads covered in at least two feet of snow), and soon they're crunching across the white, leaving imprints of their boots, Shī's only a bit larger than her own.

The campus looms up ahead of them, and then the apartment buildings directly left of the sprawling land come into view. She knows that's her stop, and she thinks it's her companion's, as well; she thinks that she's seen him walking in and out of the lobby, far too often for just visiting someone. They come to the door, and she reaches out to push it open, grateful for the coming warmth. A hand gloved in dark red appears and stops her; she makes an indignant noise, unhappy at being kept from the warm lobby of the apartment complex.

"Sakura… I know this is coming out of nowhere. But, um, would you like to grab a coffee with me?" He gestures to the coffee shop and bakery combination, with its gingerbread house-looking trim and swinging sign decorated with a steaming cartoon coffee cup and cupcake, that sits next to the apartments. A rush of warmth comes to her face, manifesting itself as a pink blush across her high cheekbones, and she's suddenly glad for the bitter cold and screaming wind—perhaps, if she's quite lucky, he'll think that the colouration is an effect of the chill and not her embarrassment.

She smiles up at him, showing off her own pearl-coloured teeth, and takes his gloved hand in her bare one, pulling him in the direction of the coffee shop, but, more importantly, closer to her. She stands on tiptoe in her black boots, just barely hitting above his chin, and, when her lips are just barely an inch from his own, whispers, "_Yes._"


End file.
